It has been a hard week, even for the thick-skinned.
The news that Jensen Huang, a co-founder of Nvidia, admitted to an affair with a woman whom U.S. intelligence regards as a Chinese spy, has shaken not only Silicon Valley and geopolitics. It also has been an earthquake for the leather-jacket-wearing community.
We ask ourselves: Was Mr. Huang an easy mark because of his love of high-fashion, motorcycle-adjacent jackets that say both “I don’t care what people think!” and “Do you like how I look?” Did our — I mean, his — armor make him a target? Is an expensive leather jacket on a middle-aged man the new symbol of a honeypot victim?
Without any authorization whatsoever, because that would go against our rebellious grain, I’m speaking out on behalf of the leather-jacket community. We are washed-up musicians and we are dads just trying to feel something again and we are people who want others to assume that we own a Ducati Panigale. And we are here to defend the leather jacket’s name and honor.
We declare: One man’s fleshly failures should not impugn our second skins. They say not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Well, similarly, don’t throw out the baby lambskin with the horny human body beneath.
For many of us, this crisis began long before my fellow graying middle-aged man fell for the oldest trick in the spy book. It began when Mr. Huang had the chutzpah to appropriate our big thing as his big thing. A tech tycoon in his soon-to-be-signature Tom Ford leather jacket was just what we were hoping the rest of the world didn’t see when it looked at us.
Even then, were we aware that we had a problem? Sure. We may have undiagnosed issues with vulnerability (as reflected in our need for a supplemental dermis), but we’re not stupid. Did we acquire multiple jackets that our spouses smeared as “identical to the last one”? Yes. But a lot of our spouses don’t know the difference between a 1.5-ounce leather and a three-ounce leather, which is like not knowing the difference between Texas and cheese. This was our thing, OK?
